The York Factory Express: Fort Vancouver to Hudson Bay, 1826-1849

By Nancy Marguerite Anderson

Every March between 1826 and 1854, the York Factory Express began its journey from the Hudson’s Bay Company’s headquarters on the Pacific Ocean, from which the express-men would paddle their boats up the Columbia River to the base of the Rocky Mountains at Boat Encampment, a thousand miles to the east. At Jasper’s House they were 3,000 feet above sea level. Their river route would then return them to salt water once more, at York Factory, on the shores of Hudson Bay. It was an amazing climb and an amazing descent, which they repeated on their journey home to the mouth of the Columbia.

The stories of the York Factory Express and of the Saskatchewan Brigades, which they joined at Edmonton House, are told in the words of the Scottish traders and clerks who wrote the journals. However, the voyageurs who made the journey possible are the invisible, unnamed Canadiens, Orkney-men, Iroquois, and their Métis children and grand-children, who powered the boats back and forth across the continent every year. But these men left no written records. If the traders had not preserved the stories the voyageurs told them, we would not know this history today — as it is portrayed in The York Factory Express.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ronsdale Press
• Release date: Aug 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781553805793

Nancy Marguerite Anderson

Nancy Marguerite Anderson fell into the stories of the pre-gold rush history of the territory west of the Rocky Mountains when she researched her great-grandfather’s writings. Her first book, The Pathfinder, told the story of Alexander Caulfield Anderson’s life in the Hudson’s Bay Company and of his experiences in the early colonial history of British Columbia. Many of these stories are told on Nancy’s blog. She makes her home in Victoria. Visit her at www.nancymargueriteanderson.com.

Book preview

Cover: The York Factory Express: Fort Vancouver to Hudson Bay, 1826–1849 by Nancy Marguerite Anderson. The cover photo shows people sailing in four boats.

THE YORK FACTORY EXPRESS

OTHER BOOKS BY NANCY MARGUERITE ANDERSON

The Pathfinder: A.C. Anderson’s Journeys in the West (Heritage House, 2011)

THE YORK FACTORY EXPRESS

Fort Vancouver to Hudson Bay, 1826–1849

Nancy Marguerite Anderson

RONSDALE PRESS

THE YORK FACTORY EXPRESS

Copyright © 2021 Nancy Marguerite Anderson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher, or, in Canada, in the case of photo copying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency).

RONSDALE PRESS

3350 West 21st Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. Canada V6S 1G7

www.ronsdalepress.com

Typesetting: Julie Cochrane, in Caslon 11.5 pt on 15

Cover Design: Julie Cochrane

Cover Image: York Factory Express boats on their way from Norway House to Oxford House. Courtesy of HBC Archives, 1985/44/34.

Maps: Eric Leinberger

Paper: Ancient Forest Friendly Enviro 100 edition, 60 lb. Husky (FSC), 100% post-consumer waste, totally chlorine-free and acid-free.

Ronsdale Press wishes to thank the following for their support of its publishing program: the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Book Publishing Tax Credit program.

Logo: The Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the Province of British Columbia.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The York Factory Express / Nancy Marguerite Anderson.

Names: Anderson, Nancy Marguerite, 1946– author.

Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2019007180X | Canadiana (ebook) 20190071818 | ISBN 9781553805786 (softcover) | ISBN 9781553805793 (HTML) | ISBN 9781553805809 (PDF)

Subjects: LCSH: Hudson’s Bay Company — History — 19th century. | LCSH: Fur trade — Northwest, Canadian — History — 19th century. | LCSH: Fur trade — Northwest, Pacific — History — 19th century. | LCSH: Trade routes — Northwest, Canadian — History — 19th century. | LCSH: Trade routes — Northwest, Pacific — History — 19th century. | LCSH: Fur traders — Northwest, Canadian — History — 19th century. | LCSH: Fur traders — Northwest, Pacific — History — 19th century.

Classification: LCC FC3213.9.F7 A53 2021 | DDC 971.2/01 — dc23

At Ronsdale Press we are committed to protecting the environment. To this end we are working with Canopy and printers to phase out our use of paper produced from ancient forests. This book is one step to wards that goal.

Printed in Canada by Island Blue, Victoria, B.C.

This book is dedicated to Robert James Harvey, Q.C., 1927–2013. He would have loved these stories.

It is also dedicated to my great-great-grandfather James Birnie, who travelled out and in with the 1826 York Factory Express.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many of the York Factory Express journals have been preserved in the British Columbia Archives, and I thank the Royal British Columbia Museum and the BC Archives for making them accessible to me. Another set of journals came from the University of Alberta Libraries online, Peel’s Prairie Provinces, and I also thank them for their generosity and accessibility.

I give special thanks to the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, who preserved Lieutenant Aemilius Simpson’s 1826 journal in its Fort Vancouver records, where I found James Birnie in it. This journal was the inspiration for this book.

I thank my readers, Michael Kennedy, and Susan Smith-Josephy, who both encouraged and criticized me. I also thank Daniel Kyba, who researched John Charles’s full story and generously shared his findings with me. Thanks also go to Caroline Gurney, who told me how Paul Kane met Thomas Lowe at Boat Encampment.

More than anyone else I have to thank my editor, Audrey McClellan of West Coast Editorial Associates (www.westcoasteditors.com), whose work has, as always, immensely improved my writing and story-telling.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

York Factory Express

CHAPTER 1

The First York Factory Express Journeys

CHAPTER 2

Fort Vancouver to Fort Nez Percés

CHAPTER 3

Fort Nez Percés to Fort Colvile

CHAPTER 4

Fort Colvile to Boat Encampment

CHAPTER 5

Boat Encampment to Jasper’s House

CHAPTER 6

Jasper’s House to Edmonton House

CHAPTER 7

Edmonton House to Carlton House

CHAPTER 8

Carlton House to Norway House

CHAPTER 9

Norway House to York Factory

CHAPTER 10

York Factory to Norway House

CHAPTER 11:

Norway House to Cumberland House

CHAPTER 12:

Cumberland House to Carlton House

CHAPTER 13:

Carlton House to Fort Pitt

CHAPTER 14:

Fort Pitt to Edmonton House

CHAPTER 15:

Edmonton House to Jasper’s House

CHAPTER 16:

Jasper’s House to Boat Encampment

CHAPTER 17:

Boat Encampment to Fort Vancouver

EPILOGUE:

We Are Still Here

Notes

List of Works Consulted

About the Author

Index

THE YORK FACTORY EXPRESS

The map shows the Pacific Ocean on the west and Hudson Bay on the East. The Coast Mountains extend along the shore of the Pacific Ocean. The Rocky Mountains extend from the North to the South in the middle. The trip is highlighted with boxes and labeled with numbers from 2 to 9 c. The trip starts at Columbia labeled 2 to 3, followed by the river labeled 4. The boxes then extend through the North Saskatchewan River labeled from 6 to 8 b till Lake Winnipeg. The boxes extend to the Hudson Bay through the Hayes River and are labeled from 9 a to 9 c.

This series of 11 maps will bring the reader from Fort Vancouver, on the Pacific coast, to York Factory, on Hudson Bay, and the return trip.

PROLOGUE

York Factory Express

LOUIS MARINEAU SPENT most of his adult life in the New Caledonia District west of the Rocky Mountains. From the district’s early days, he was there and constantly on the move, a horseman riding from one Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) trading post to another, from one First Nations village to another, throughout the year. Everyone knew him by sight, but no one knew him well.

For the most part he rode alone, but every spring, when the snow lay on the ground, Louis Marineau rode away from Fort Alexandria at the head of the New Caledonia spring express, taking men and mail to the Columbia River post of Fort Colvile in time to meet the men and boats making their way up the river from the HBC headquarters at Fort Vancouver, near the mouth of the Columbia River. The men from Fort Vancouver, and those who joined them along the way, made up the annual York Factory Express, which crossed the Rocky Mountains on its way to Hudson Bay. Marineau also met the incoming Columbia Express every September at the same post, and he delivered the men new to the territory to Fort Alexandria, on the Fraser River. Marineau’s delivery system functioned because he was so reliable: he never failed in his duty. In his quiet way he was an important but unacknowledged part of the York Factory Express, the New Caledonia man who kept the lines of communication open and the men moving.

Almost nothing is known about Louis Marineau. Although he was always called Marineau in the fur trade journals, his full name was Louis Desasten (Martineau). He was French Canadian (Canadien), born in Lower Canada (Quebec) about 1800. He arrived in New Caledonia as early as 1826 and may have gone out to Hudson Bay with the early York Factory Expresses in 1827 and 1828. By 1840, he was stationed at Fort Alexandria. He took a First Nations woman as his wife, and if he had children he raised them there. His descendants, if any, are still here, although we do not know who they are.

In the early years of the North West Company, the Canadiens crossed to the west side of the Rocky Mountains in such numbers that they ruled the fur trade. Even after the Hudson’s Bay Company took control of the territory in 1821, the Canadiens were the most conspicuous members of the early canoe brigades and the York Factory Express that followed.

They were, however, not the only voyageurs west of the Rockies. The Iroquois were here too, in large numbers. They were the tough guys, the bullies of the York Factory Express, who maintained order with their fists. Michel Kaonassé was one of these men. He had arrived at Fort Vancouver by 1834 and served in New Caledonia the following year, where he was steersman in the brigades from Fort St. James to Fort Vancouver. In January 1843, he squared wood for the saws at Fort Alexandria, which meant he acted as carpenter and, probably, boat-builder.

His Indigenous wife died later that year, and he moved on to Fort Colvile after her burial. In 1848, after the death of Joe Tayentas, the long-time guide for the York Factory Express, Michel Kaonassé took over that important position and led out both Thomas Lowe’s 1848 express and that of John Charles a year later. In 1849, Kaonassé’s inattention led to two boats colliding in the middle of a fierce set of rapids on the Columbia River. The men from one of those wrecked boats were stranded on a rocky islet in the middle of the river until the second boat was repaired and sent out to rescue them. All reached Fort Vancouver in safety.

This accident did not mean the end of Kaonassé’s career as guide for the York Factory Express. He continued in that position for a few more years, until 1852, when he injured himself to the point of disability and was replaced by another man. Unable to work, Kaonassé retired from the HBC and disappeared.

Scots and Orkneymen also worked on the west side of the Rocky Mountains, although they rarely made it into the stories of the York Factory Express. They were known to be good agriculturists at the inland posts, but indifferent voyageurs. One of them might be Norman Smith, who travelled west in Thomas Lowe’s 1848 Columbia Express. On the Athabasca River, the voyageurs, who were tracking the boats along the riverbank, startled a bear, which ran up the bank in its surprise and attacked Smith. Before it could be driven off, the bear bit Smith’s forehead and face, although Lowe said the damage was not serious. Common as the name Smith might be in the East, there are no men of that name in any of the journals from the west side of the Rocky Mountains. It is sometimes difficult to track the men who worked in the HBC trade west of the Rockies, but Norman Smith seems more invisible than most.

This is not true of others: for example, John Greig. He was born about 1825 in the Orkney Islands and joined the HBC in 1844. From York Factory, Greig was sent across the country to Fort Colvile where he worked as a farm labourer. He retired in 1851 and rode to Fort Langley in the outgoing brigade led by Alexander Caulfield Anderson. At Fort Victoria he quarried limestone at Lime Bay, and burning it in a small kiln, produced lime which he sold to the HBC for use on its farmlands.¹ Eventually he purchased land on Tod Inlet, in central Saanich, where he farmed, manufactured lime, and entertained his neighbours with food, drink, music, and stories of his crossing of the continent with the York Factory Express. After Greig’s death, his sons sold the property to the Saanich Lime Company, and eventually the Portland Cement Company, run by Robert Pim Butchart, took it over. Today his farm and lime quarry is part of the world-famous Butchart Gardens.

Many early Canadiens and Orkneymen spent their voyaging career on the east side of the Rocky Mountains, on the Saskatchewan River or in the Red River Colony. There they raised the mixed-blood children they had with their Indigenous wives. When the Canadiens in Lower Canada no longer chose voyaging as their career, the mixed-blood youths from the Saskatchewan District and Red River joined the HBC and were sent to the west side of the Rocky Mountains. They are now known as the Métis (may-tea), from a French word that means mixed.² Michel Fallardeau was one of these Métis. He joined the HBC in 1827, and in the autumn came west over the Rocky Mountains in Edward Ermatinger’s Columbia Express.

For the next twenty years, Fallardeau lived and worked in New Caledonia, travelling to Fort Vancouver with the New Caledonia Brigades most years. In 1847, when Chief Trader A.C. Anderson made one of two cross-country expeditions in search of a new brigade trail to Fort Langley from Kamloops, Michel Fallardeau was one of five men who accompanied him.

The following year, Fallardeau suffered a stroke or heart attack while guarding the Fort Alexandria horses, and although he recovered, the attack frightened him. He returned to his family at Kamloops and died there of a supposed beating by Chief Trader Paul Fraser in or before spring 1855. Fraser argued that rough boards were good enough for the coffin of the rascal, Fallardeau, but the Iroquois who built Fallardeau’s coffin objected. Fraser himself was killed in summer 1855 when a tree dropped on the tent he occupied. The suspicion lingers that a voyageur killed Fraser for the beating death of Fallardeau, but no records remain to prove this. It is just a story, but Métis history is recorded in its stories, even on the west side of the Rocky Mountains.

Canadien, Iroquois, and Métis histories are told in the stories of the York Factory Express, the annual journey from Fort Vancouver to Hudson Bay and return. The main party, often twenty or thirty strong, departed Fort Vancouver (today’s Vancouver, Washington), on the lower Columbia River, in late March. They worked their way to the upper river posts, forts Okanogan and Colvile, where in later years they picked up the outgoing New Caledonia and Thompson River men. From those western posts the York Factory Express made its way over the Rocky Mountains via Boat Encampment (at the Big Bend of the Columbia River), Athabasca Pass, and the Jasper Valley. At Fort Assiniboine and Edmonton House, the express-men joined the men of the Lesser Slave Lake Brigades and those of the Saskatchewan District, who were also on their way to York Factory, on Hudson Bay.

The York Factory Express was one of three transportation systems west of the Rocky Mountains. The first transportation system, on which everything else depended, consisted of the London ships that sailed into Fort Vancouver every summer, and also into Hudson Bay. These ships carried the trade goods to the headquarters on the Pacific coast, and on Hudson Bay, where they were picked up by the brigades. They also brought the HBC reports and letters, and passengers who were picked up by the expresses and the brigades. The journey to and from Fort Vancouver, around the southern tip of South America, took the London ships two years, so to save time, many papers and passengers were delivered to York Factory, on Hudson Bay. From York Factory they were transported across the continent to the Columbia District by the incoming express on its return journey to Fort Vancouver.

The second transportation system consisted of the larger, slow-moving brigades, which carried the winter catch of furs from the interior posts to the London ships, then carried the trade goods back to the posts. When the Columbia District men, who travelled in the York Factory Express, reached Edmonton House, they joined the Saskatchewan Brigades that were carrying furs to the London ships at York Factory. The Saskatchewan District’s express-men, who were attending the HBC council meeting at Red River (now part of Winnipeg) or Norway House, travelled out with the brigades and were indistinguishable from them.

West of the Rocky Mountains, however, the brigades operated entirely separately from the express. The brigades left their New Caledonia headquarters of Fort St. James in May of every year, carrying out their winter-trapped furs. The brigade men travelled south and east by boat and pack horse to Fort Okanogan, reaching that place in early June — two months after the York Factory Express men had passed the post on their way up the Columbia River.

The brigade boats arrived at Fort Vancouver in late June and delivered their packs of furs to the storehouse, to be shipped to London with the departing London ship.

The brigade men then left Fort Vancouver in July, carrying heavy loads of tobacco, firearms, and trade goods for their winter business of trading with First Nations men for furs. They were at Fort Okanogan by August, a full two months before the incoming express was expected. By early September, they had reached their headquarters at Fort St. James and were distributing the newly imported trade goods throughout the surrounding districts.

The third transportation system was the York Factory Express, which left its headquarters of Fort Vancouver every year, carrying out papers and reports for the annual HBC council meeting in the East. Any passengers who travelled out with the express were either attending the meeting, transferring to different posts east of the Rocky Mountains, or retiring. The York Factory Express was all about fast communication of information to the governor and council, and to London via the ships that sailed into Hudson Bay.

However, when the express-men from the west side of the Rocky Mountains reached Edmonton House, they became part of the Saskatchewan Brigades, helping the men in those brigades make their way to York Factory with their winter furs. The presence of the express-men strengthened the Saskatchewan Brigades, making it safer for all the HBC men travelling down the North Saskatchewan River through the territory of the Blackfoot, Blood, and Peigan, who were, in theory, always ready to attack a weak party of travellers.

This book tells the stories of the York Factory Express and of the Saskatchewan Brigades. These stories are told in the words of the gentlemen, the educated, usually Scottish traders, clerks, and other administrators who wrote the journals. However, the men who made the express journey possible are the invisible, unnamed Canadiens and their Métis descendants who powered the boats across the continent every year between 1826 and 1854. The gentlemen were the passengers. The Canadiens, Orkneymen, and Iroquois, and their Métis children and grandchildren did all the heavy work and were almost entirely responsible for the success of the 5,400-mile journey. But their history was oral. If the gentlemen had not preserved the stories the voyageurs told them, we would not have a written record of this history today.

The York Factory Express journey to Hudson Bay, and its return as the Columbia Express, was unique to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fur trade west of the Rocky Mountains after 1825. The earlier North West Company ran canoe brigades across the country from Lachine (now part of Montreal) to the Columbia River, but the HBC’s York Factory Express was a different animal altogether. The NWC brigades carried heavy loads of furs or goods; the express carried papers and passengers out of the territory, and papers and passengers in — very little more.

The thirty or so men who travelled out in the York Factory Express began their journey at Fort Vancouver, the HBC’s Columbia River headquarters, 100 miles east of the rugged points of land where the Columbia River rumbled into the Pacific Ocean. The express-men paddled their clinker-built boats up the rock- and rapids-filled Columbia to the base of the Rocky Mountains at Boat Encampment, 900 miles east and north of Fort Vancouver. The men literally pulled their boats upriver, for their camp at Boat Encampment was more than 1,500 feet above sea level. They then climbed over the Rocky Mountains on foot. At Jasper’s House, on the east side of the Rockies, they were 3,000 feet above sea level. Their river route eastward would return them to salt water once more, at York Factory on the shores of Hudson Bay. It was an amazing climb and an amazing descent, and they would do another climb and descent on their journey home.

But the York Factory Express was more complicated than a difficult climb over the Rocky Mountains, followed by a relatively easy drift down the Athabasca and North Saskatchewan rivers. It was also a carefully timed journey, as the gentlemen were to attend the annual meeting at Red River or Norway House, where they delivered their district accounts to the governor and council of the Hudson’s Bay Company. They left Fort Vancouver in time to cross Athabasca Pass in the early spring, while the snow underfoot was solid and the weather generally good. They reached the Athabasca River when its ice was mostly melted. At the point where the Athabasca flowed as far south as it would go, they abandoned their canoes and boats and crossed the land portage to Edmonton House, on the North Saskatchewan River.

More transformations occurred as they reached Edmonton House. At that prairie headquarters the fast-travelling, lightly laden express party joined the Saskatchewan District’s slow-moving brigades that lumbered down the North Saskatchewan River, passing through rolling grasslands. The express-men had feasted on biscuits, potatoes, and salmon west of the Rockies; now they gorged on pemmican, bison steaks, and whitefish on the east side of the mountains. On the prairies they hunted buffalo (more accurately called bison), moose deer (moose), and bear, and sometimes those creatures hunted them. They gave aid to tattered remnants of Indian bands who had battled their enemies and lost; at times they met the victors of those endless Indigenous wars. As time passed, they met the missionaries who established missions among the First Nations peoples along the Saskatchewan River and at Norway House. On their return to the west side of the Rockies, they ran into Americans who flooded west over the Oregon Trail to claim lands in the territory the fur traders had opened up.

Changes happened everywhere over these years, but for the Canadien voyageurs and their Métis descendants, life remained much the same as it had been for their seventeenth-century French ancestors, who came from Normandy, Perche, and Île-de-France in the north of France, and Saintonge, Nantes, and La Rochelle to the south. These Canadiens had a long history of settlement in Quebec, and many had long histories of service in the fur trade of the Hudson’s Bay Company and its predecessor, the North West Company.

The Canadiens also had a long history of getting along with the First Nations people who lived in villages close to their own in Quebec. Many of their French ancestors had arrived in Quebec with Samuel de Champlain, and, like Champlain, they had a natural ability to get along with others. They were historically a warm, amiable people who called each other friends, brothers, and cousins. They got along with everyone they respected, and quietly resisted those who offended or mistreated them.

The Canadiens brought their French language into the fur trade, and all who worked with them had to speak their tongue. They brought their beloved birchbark canoes to the fur trade as well, but traditions changed and over the years they gave up their canoes for the more practical wooden boats built by the Orkneymen. The Canadiens were adaptable people, always willing to adjust their traditions when it suited them. They sang their traditional songs from France and Quebec, and changed them. They celebrated variations of their Catholic-based ceremonies mixed with the traditions of their First Nations or Métis wives or mothers. When a companion died, as sometimes happened, they mourned his death with a song they called a complainte. In their world, they were all friends and companions, and they understood and supported each other.

Those who were chosen for the express were strong young men whose overabundance of testosterone was the engine that powered their boats. They brought many and varied skills to the trade: their long-time familiarity with boats, canoes, and water travel gave them the ability to quickly repair the damaged boats and canoes. They were river smart, and when the wind blew in the right direction they put up their sails and relaxed.

They taught newcomers to the trade how to paddle the canoe and carry the loads over the portages, with the tumpline perfectly adjusted to take the weight. These young men were proud of their vocation. Before they arrived at each post they paused to wash their faces and don fresh shirts and ribbons so they could paddle around the final corner in the river as energetically as if they had just started the voyage.

Like all young men, they partied hard, and they drank their regales of rum, given to them by the gentlemen, with gusto. They consumed enormous amounts of meat when it was available, but starved if it was not. They scorned sleep and paddled long hours every day when the going was good and the river safe. They took many risks, knowing they might not survive them, but they also listened to the advice of their elders.

They trusted their respected guide, following his instructions through dangerous passages, and surviving. They teased each other out of bad moods and made jokes of the unbelievable difficulties they endured. In this way, they accomplished the impossible, and they were always careful to make the impossible appear to be only a few days’ casual journey.

This was their life, and they were happy in it. They were young men, and flaunting their manliness was a part of the voyageur culture, just as their ability to hunt for food was a part of their manliness. Like their ancestors, who had left France two centuries earlier and made their homes in the wilderness of Quebec, these men chose to live in a new wilderness. They spurned the gentlemen’s idea of civilization. They loved their freedoms and believed that they were free. Many times, Canadien and Métis men who arrived on the west side of the Rocky Mountains never returned home, but married and died in the west.

Their many descendants are still here. We are still here.

CHAPTER 1

The First York Factory Express Journeys

THE FIRST OFFICIAL York Factory Express journeys took place in 1826, when two groups of men travelled by two different routes to meet and merge at Edmonton House. The main express party departed Fort Vancouver, on the lower Columbia River, in March. The second party, which left Fort St. James, New Caledonia, in May, had a shorter journey to make, and easier rivers with fewer portages and rapids to contend with.

The York Factory Express that left Fort Vancouver in 1826 was a little different from the expresses that came after it and had difficulties that none of the others experienced. Ensuring the York Factory Express ran efficiently was a learning experience for John McLoughlin, the chief factor (head trader) in charge of Fort Vancouver in 1826, and McLoughlin made some choices that placed stress on the men who had to make the journey. For one thing, he ordered the express-men to deliver calves and piglets to Spokane House for the farms at the new post of Fort Colvile that would be constructed over the summer.

Chief Trader John McLeod, recently in charge of the Thompson’s River post, had come down to Fort Vancouver and was leaving the territory. HBC Governor George Simpson was moving him to the east side of the Rocky Mountains, where he would take charge of Norway House.¹ McLoughlin gave McLeod the task of leading out the first York Factory Express. His most important duty was to reach Edmonton House in time to join the Saskatchewan Brigades.

The HBC men travelled across the Rocky Mountains regularly, but until 1826 they had taken the old North West Company route down the Athabasca River from Jasper’s House to the Clearwater River, then over the Methye Portage to a system of rivers that led them to Cumberland House, on the Saskatchewan River. This year they would cross to the North Saskatchewan River by way of the new Athabasca Portage (sometimes called the Assiniboine Portage). No one knew what this new route might hold for them. It turned out, however, that the most difficult part of the 1826 voyage was the more familiar section through the Columbia District to Boat Encampment at the base of Athabasca Pass. John McLeod described the trip in his journal of the first York Factory Express from Fort Vancouver to Edmonton House:²

March 1826 Monday 20th. Started from Ft. Vancouver at 4 p.m. with 2 Boats accompanied by Messrs. [James] Douglas & [Francis] Ermatinger, passengers, 3 Calves & 3 Pigs. Raining very heavy. Encamped early & gave the men time to take their [regale] at the upper end of the [Plain] before the fort.

Tuesday 21st … Proceeded and breakfasted at the upper end of Johnston Island. Proceeded and encamped at a little stream opposite [line illegible]. Rained all day and cold. I am much afraid that the calves will not be got up safe.

Wednesday 22nd. Started at half past 5, put the calves ashore at the foot of the Cascades. Breakfasted in the middle of the Portage. Very disagreeable weather since left Ft. Vancouver.

Thursday 23. Raining all Day. Proceeded about 4 a.m. Put the Calves ashore at the Lower end of Thompsons Portage, gave them in charge to the little Chief and Mr. McKay’s guide & one Owhyhee [Hawaiian]. Proceeded with the Boats and encamped at the little Rivière Dalles. Great many Indians assembled and Remained all night. Kept watch all night.³

He continued his journey on March